Pirate Market

[Deadvickyart]

You haven't bought anything from C.A.R.L. recently, have you?  All the good stuff is only for traitors now, it's been that way for months.

I've been playing on goonstation for probably around 6 or 7 years now, since before cogmap 1 was introduced. I'm well aware of the power level of the debris field merchants and I've already looked at the code to balance this stuff. I put a lot of effort into designing this stuff and I'd like a little bit of respect here, come on. Some of the complaints here are verging on hysteria and any admin will back me up, for every rule breaker who causes trouble in a round there's usually 60 or so players who are having fun without breaking the rules or antagonising other players. In peak hours around 130 people play on goon 1, and rule breaking doesn't even happen every round (Going to stress here that I mean *the server rules*, not space law. Space law exists to be broken and dealing with minor breaches of it is supposed to be the main reason security even exists, hence why they're encouraged to brig people for 2-5 minutes). Also CARL has never been traitor only, agent cards are avaliable elsewhere and the phase walk gene can get you through. Historically it's been open to other things like RCD use too.

I saw someone rush syndicate command armor as non antag every round for like a week (this was before the cost was increased), and this was on roleplay too. If you cant have roleplayers behave and rush gamer loot every round, how can you expect the same from classic, where semi regularly people powergame to hunt antags (these syndicate items youre suggesting to be purchasable would be very good for that).

That's how secrets work on goonstation. People work out how a system works, they work out how to do it very quickly and do it over and over again over the course of the next couple of weeks, and they experiment with them. Most of the time this doesn't cause any problems. Look at people learning how to do the ice moon or something for example, you see people approach the feature out of curiousity, get hooked, and spend a lot of shifts in a row trying to uncover exactly how the feature works, then they work it out and play with the rewards for a couple weeks. You're only noticing the occasional bad player who abuses it.

If people are handling contraband constantly and causing trouble round after round, that's either an in-character issue for security to deal with (take their shit and throw them in the brig). If they step over the line and break server rules or make a habit of murdering people it's an issue for the admins. Ahelp is always avaliable and most ahelps result in the player improving their behaviour after a light warning, it's not just for requesting bans.

I mean sure maybe the grand majority of the playerbase follows the rules like good little noodles, but the feature you're designing seems to greatly reward those that don't

They are all good noodles and they will follow the rules. Even for people who regularly get banned, they generally make an effort to follow them almost all the time. Admins will back me up on this. If you think otherwise, you are just wrong and you should maybe stop reading the ban appeal forum and dead/OOC chat so much - they paint a very out-of-context and negative picture of the in game experience.

Anyway, we've talked the issue to death already and none of the people complaining about potential rulebreaking or powergaming is an admin. I'd like to move on from that issue entirely unless an admin pops in to say that it's a serious enough issue to stop the feature being implemented for a trial run. I'm wanting to expand the goon economy and credit system into something people actually use and engage with, not pre emptively stop potential space crimes like I'm in the minority report.